Analysis UP THE CHINA RABBIT-HOLE - The TV Docudrama Series (Update)

Mar 1, 2014
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EPILOGUE SETTING # 2.

Shanghai International Airport, Pu Dong District.

External view of China Eastern airliner at Gate 13 air bridge being lashed with rain. Camera travels inside to first class, closes in on tall Caucasian passenger with glasses, prominent Roman nose and a pointy bald head jabbing a finger ruthlessly at his iPhone ... the same Huawei model as used by State Security officers.

VOICE (in putonghua then English with Chinese accent): “This is your captain speaking. More bad news for us, I’m afraid... “

The Kaiser is yet again stranded on the tarmac en route as a typhoon rages up the China Coast, and as PAFC sports diplomacy, enterprise success and global brand expansion carries on far to the north.

Without him.

Again.

Krupp has been left fuming in the aftermath of an Extraordinary General Meeting that packed out a hall in the Adelaide Convention Centre, called to vote on changes to the PAFC Constitution. All changes were approved, overwhelmingly - in spite of Krupp campaigning vigorously against any changes at all. It seemed the harder he campaigned, the harder his status quo campaign became.

The changes to the Club Constitution transfer significant decision-making and enactment power away from the Chairman and his directors by:

  • Increasing elected board members from two to maximum of five - thereby cutting the Chairman’s traditional dictatorial powers and his controlling influence over appointments to, and operation of, the PAFC Board - with 1) pre-selection of candidates to be monitored by an independent auditor, 2) the process of assessment of candidates to not be restricted to decision of current members of the PAFC Board or executive, and 3) voting members being made as fully aware as practicable of policies, profiles, qualifications and experience of all candidates via, but not restricted to, open information sessions, club media networks and direct digital mailing.
  • Authorising the ‘China Strategy’ as an essential Transformation of PAFC, provided that the interests and future of the Club and its Members are fully protected by the appointment of or election to the PAFC Board of at least two directors with a diversification of China, Asia, Asia-Pacific or other international experience totalling not less than five years each.
  • Approving the belatedly established China Committee, consisting of the most efficacious mix of Board members, Club executives, and volunteer Members based either in Australia or overseas, all with appropriate China experience or responsibilities, reporting to the CEO and the PAFC Board.
  • Approving the rank of Executive General Manager and the appointment or recruitment of qualified candidates, operating directly below and reporting to the CEO, with separate senior executive responsibilities for 1) Football, 2) Business, 3) China, 4) Communications and 5) Finance, Operations and Administration.
  • Approving establishment of a Successful Enterprise Committee - consisting of Board members, Executive General Managers and specialist commercial executives of both the Business and the China divisions, a representative of the Communications division, minimum two representatives of Power Community Ltd., plus selected volunteer Members, reporting to the CEO and Board - with overriding emphasis on ‘successful’ as per title.
  • Sanctioning the positioning internationally of permanent full-time staff as and when needed, starting immediately, as approved by the PAFC Board, leading up to the registration of global PAFC offices in selected locations.
Krupp swears gutterally to himself. Snatches up the in-flight magazine. Takes as little notice as possible of the red sash diagonally across the cover reading:

CHINA EASTERN AIRLINES IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.


You see, when Cathay Pacific’s hacking scandal hit home in Hong Kong, the airline cut its marketing and advertising budget, got rid of accounts that did not rate highly on their scale of priorities or accounts with whom Cathay executives had no personal relationship. Port Adelaide was first to go. The Club’s reaction was to do nothing, except express gratitude that they had an excuse for failure - the hacking. This was an insult to past personnel and volunteers who worked with focus, determination and smarts to not only bring the deluxe carrier, Hong Kong’s own, on board the PAFC China Strategy ... but to be the flagship for it.

Today, with the new Club structure, personnel and purpose, it was a different story. Cathay Pacific had come back to Alberton bearing gifts, to be told that they were too late ... that China Eastern Airlines had put in front of the Club a partnership offer too good to be refused.


EPILOGUE SETTING # 3.

Pro Drinkers Corner across from Happy Valley Race Course, Hong Kong.

Road is reading print version of story from Beijing under byline of Sam Agars accompanied by a panoramic photo taken inside the Great Hall of the People the night before, on the front page of South China Morning Post. He smiles to himself as he takes up a cold stubbie of Tsingtao beer.

ROAD: “Deng Xiaoping, he say something like ... ‘It matters not if the cat or the dog is black or white ... or silver or teal blue ... it’s a good cat if it catches the mouse; it’s a great dog if it catches the rabbit.”

CHINA STATE NET SAYS “THANKS MATE” FROM AFAR

This is the headline for Agars’ article. It has gone viral on the internet, globally, not only in China. It carries a secondary headline.

POWER GIANT RESIDENT DOWN UNDER FOR 20 YEARS SHOWS AUSSIE HEART VIA MASSIVE PARTNERSHIP WITH AFL AND PORT ADELAIDE

LR has seen on his iPad that there is also a prominent report on-line in The Weekend Australian, next to a separate piece under the headline:

FIRB BENDS ITS OWN RULES: APPROVES CHINA STATE NET PURCHASE OF APA GAS PIPELINE

Another headline above a full-page feature article with Rowan Callick’s byline, immediately before the sports section, reads:

SPORTS DIPLOMACY VICTORY CEREMONY IN GREAT HALL - IT TAKES TWO THOUSAND TO TANGO IN BEIJING

A number of contributors to the comments section had made the connection, half in unfriendly terms, sme of the other half several complimenting China State Net for their sense of PR, with one enquiring why it had taken them so long to wake up to the need to condition the market in Australia.

LR has searched the worldwide web. The angle that had amused him most was the New York Times editorial which advised the White House, tongue in cheek, to issue an executive order that everyone involved in the arduous negotiations with China urgently take up Australian Football and fly to Beijing wearing smiles and full Port Adelaide regalia. Obviously it works, observed the Times managing editor

Road goes back to focusing on a face in one of the smaller photos in the Post - the face of an occupant of the main PAFC table in the Great Hall.

Camera pans in until it can be seen, despite pixel deficiency inherent with print media, who it is.

It’s Darren Cahill.


Theme music:

‘The Dragon’ (Vangelis)




Darren is sitting next to Mr. Xiao Junxi.

Mr. Xiao is showing Darren his phone.

Camera tightens further, and we are back to the night before, eye-witnesses up close to what was going on between Darren Cahill, a director of PAFC and tennis coach internationale, and Xiao Junxi, promoted to President, International of China State Gas & Power Net.

We see that on the screen of Xiao’s phone is a sequence of action pictures of his son, now in his late teens, wearing whites ... playing tennis at Wimbledon.

Mr. Xiao points to someone behind his son, sitting in the Wimbledon coaching enclosure.

It’s Roger Federer.

XIAO (via Fu Mingfeng): “Thank you, Darren, for the introduction to Roger.”
CAHILL: “Your son is a keen student, and Roger is a great mentor for your son.”
XIAO: “So are you, Darren. He so loves it in Adelaide. Tennis ... cricket ... AFL ... He so loves Port Adelaide Football Club. We are Port Adelaide. All my family. Always will be.”


The three drink a toast in real, genuine Kwei Zhou brand mou tai.

No phoney ‘li’l ole blue-collar footy club from Alberton’ hogwash tonight.

Kan bei,” smiles Darren, winks at the camera ... winks at Lockhart Road.

ROAD (winks back): “Thanks Darren. And thanks to your dad, too. Jack was a team-mate of Peter Chant. So was I. Different teams.”

Road takes a swig of his Tsingtao. He shows the label to the camera. Across the bottle is a diagonal red sash.

TSINGTAO BEER IS PROUD TO BE A JOINT MAJOR SPONSOR
OF THE PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB.


Road looks out of the Pro Drinkers Corner. He peers north across the top of the banyans shrouding Happy Valley Race Course. He sees the Hong Kong Football Club’s three-storey main building where PAFC have held reciprocal partnership rights since Grand Final weekend, September 2013, when Russell Ebert brought up the paperwork from Alberton and took back such a glowing report on Hong Kong and the prospects for the Club that Karl Krupp seized on it for himself and herded his tenderfoot board of directors into town in mid May 2014, to stage a business luncheon and a board meeting at the HKFC.

Rick Mattinson had been part of that group, had stayed on in Hong Kong for a few days. Riding on the ‘Star’ Ferry back to the Island after a Chinese dinner in Tsimshatsui with Mr. and Mrs. Road, Mattinson had pointed at the neon signs atop the phalanx of skyscrapers along the Central District, Wanchai and Causeway Bay waterfronts.

MATTINSON: “Up there. I want to see it up there.”

Road, sitting in the Pro Drinkers Corner all these years later, sees it, looks at it, focuses on it, reads it. It is a bright silver neon sign, thickly bordered in black, on top of the building right behind the multi-storey HQ of the Hong Kong Jockey Club next to the HKFC.

No, not the sign that reads WE ARE PORT ADELAIDE ...

The sign above it. The sign with the moving tally, and the big screen with the photo that is turning the tally over, as thousands of Chinese and tourists crowd into Times Square, point up, look up, laugh: “Ho duk yee wor!” in Cantonese, “Mengmeng da!“ in putonghua - “So cute!” - take selfies or photos of each other with the sign in the background, send them all over China, all around the world. Many are searching their phones for the place to sign up ... ...


Theme music:

‘Power Play’ (Eddie and the Tide)




BringBackTheBars

View attachment 681573

369,747
Have Signed the Petition So Far



This photo and yet another article will be in VOGUE China next week. The text will include the agreement by the AFL for Port Adelaide to wear Prison Bars for all home games from now on, including versus Collingwood.

Included, too, will be an article about Darren Cahill ... announcing his newest protege - China’s latest fast-rising international tennis tyro.

Lockhart Road checks the PAFC website on his iPad.
Rick Mattinson, GM International Memberships & Merchandise, is doing a superlative job.
International memberships for the Club have skyrocketed to 119,119.
The Crows, including 50% ‘digital’ fake memberships, are 99,999 and flat.
PAFC is at 220,000, all paid up and rising.


International POWER merchandise sales via PAFC’s eCommerce joint venture in China, first announced on the eve of Jiangwan Stadium II in May 2018, properly launched later via VOGUE China, are going into orbit.

Camera pans out, up up and away ... until the Earth is seen rotating on its axis.

The Great Wall of China can easily be identified.

Music is rising from the planet, voices singing, a ballad, louder, louder, stronger, stronger, the words clearer and clearer.

We have heard this before ... on Thursday, 30 April 2015 ... in the Chairman’s Bar of the Hong Kong Football Club ... after the ANZAC Centenary Luncheon.

It is ‘Power To The People’ by John Schumann ... with his multi-cultural chorus of Chinese footballers and Vietnam Vets.

Screen fills in soft-focus: Mumbles, John E., Eric Edmonds and LR: “To us!”

Scene before final fade-out: Camera looking down paternally on Road and his Nokia C2-01 2011 vintage, left alone in Pro Drinkers Corner: representing the spot from where the strings have been pulled on the PAFC China Strategy, from its immaculate conception to its glorious culmination.

Road thinks back to September 2013, when the deal was done between PAFC and the HKFC, with the latter being likened to either a launchpad or command module. Either way the inference was that China was akin to the Moon as far as Australian Football in general and Port Adelaide in particular were concerned.

The full Moon, sailing along silvery through pumes of cloud, fills the screen.

ROAD (lifts his Tsingtao to it): “Here’s to the quiet little bloke. To Pete.”

LR’s playlist via the hi-fi provides the fade-out music:


‘(If You Believe They Put a) Man on the Moon’ (R.E.M.)





————— # —————


I thought the bald headed K bloke's name was Klutz not Krupp. ;)
 

Tibbs

The Bearded ZERK!
Sep 9, 2013
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SCENE 63 -

Notes:

Road sits alone.

He’s concentrating more than thinking. He’s frowning some more. The hi-fi in Pro Drinkers Corner takes over the theme music. The George Hamilton IV ballad from 1958 is on LR’s personal Spotify playlist. He takes out his Nokia, looks at it, puts it on the table, picks it up, looks at it, puts it back on the table. It has no answers for him, his vintage Nokia ... just a memory bursting with unfortunate texts, a memory stained with unfortunate memories.

He suffers PTSD flashbacks to thus far unreported Red Adair outbreaks. There was the Tom Jonas issue in June 2016; Tom was serving a six-week suspension for something stupid on-field and so the Club sent him up with the promo team for Gui’s gala luncheon in Shanghai. Road asked Rick Mattinson to confirm that this was true, that Jonas was really coming. Road wanted to know if the senior coach had approved it. Rick asked: “What’s wrong? People in China don’t know Tom’s been suspended do they?”

That wasn’t the point, so far as LR was concerned. Instead of working his guts out in atonement through his penalty period, Jonas was rewarded with a junket to China. What did the other players think of that? What message did it send to them? Those were the questions that had instantly flown into LR’s head. Those were the questions that would’ve flown into Big Bob McLean’s head. According to Big Bob’s code of conduct, Tom Jonas, co-captain nowadays, would’ve been locked in the gym with iron and treadmills for silent judgemental company, not given Cathay Pacific air stewardesses to chat up and ask: “How good is this?”

On his return to Alberton, having sat in airliners and airports for a couple of days, Tom Jonas promptly pulled a hamstring, never played again that season.

Then there was June 2017, the SCAFL finals round in Hong Kong.

The opening round in January was in Guangzhou, attended by Rick Mattinson who was told a new China team - the first to be introduced to the league since PAFC started its sponsorship in 2014-2015 - was ready to play an exhibition match during finals round in Hong Kong in June, in preparation for admission to SCAFL for season 2017-2018.

Rick, in January, had then come to Hong Kong where Road and Robbins had readied for him a forty-eight hour itinerary - seven diverse appointments that included eCommerce and social media actives (subjects on LR’s mind being international POWER merchandise marketing and sales, and international PAFC membership marketing and sales), also an interview with Sam Agars at HKFC, published in the South China Morning Post - first of a series of articles under Sam’s byline leading up to and during Jiangwan Stadium I (see links below).

Result from the forty-eight hour itinerary and the seven appointments: nothing, zilch, zada, zero follow-up from Alberton on any of the seven opportunities. Make that seven minus one.

The Sam Agars article was followed up on from Hong Kong, not Alberton.


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...d-nba-punch-port-adelaide-bring-real-afl-deal


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...-game-only-beginning-afls-port-adelaide-leave


https://www.scmp.com/sport/other-sp...-aussie-rules-china-stay-how-do-port-adelaide


Whilst in Guangzhou for the opening round back in January, Rick had asked SCAFL to consider a moniker for the new Chinese team that contained a Port Adelaide connotation. On return to Alberton, he quit his China responsibilities apart from taking the lead on the annual Shanghai event. Consequently, the Club took their eye off South China. They deny that to this day.

As a consequence, the new China team, instead of being christened Huizhou Power (remember Pearl River Power from 2015?) or similar, ran onto the pitch for the exhibition match in June 2017 wearing brown and gold and responding to calls of “Huizhou Hawks!” Yes, you heard right, the Hawks.

Rick again had no idea what Road was so upset about. “We can’t,” he said, “be seen to be the bully up there.” ‘Oh yes we can’, LR thought, ‘we’re paying for it, but we’re not keeping a professional eye on where our money is going, or even appearing to care where it’s going; if we did keep an eye on it, and care, I would call that due diligence, protecting PAFC’s interests, not bullying.’

Huizhou Hawks have proved to be a distinct fail. They turn up to games looking like dogs’ breakfasts. Their name has already changed, but still not to anything indicating PAFC or Power.

By not sitting still, by not letting each of these issues fly by unchallenged, they became nails in Road’s coffin ... waiting to be hammered in.

More nails, twenty thousand of them, are the A$20,000 that the Club pays to SCAFL each year as a competition sponsorship fee - something Road initiated (and Rick Mattinson reluctantly endorsed) for the 2014-15 season at a SCAFL Committee meeting held in Coyote, Wanchai. Payment of the fee has become an annual ‘expense’, as routine as the scarcity of interest shown by the Club in achieving any sort of return on what is in fact an ‘investment’.


Theme music:

‘I Just Don’t Understand’ (Ann-Margret)




Voice of Narrator:

Fear of volunteers. Every football club of any size and ambition is the same. Every football club of size and ambition fears their volunteers. At least, the executives whose salaries are paid by the football club do. Unstable these executives are ... unstable enough to visualise the volunteers showing them up, and taking over their jobs ... for free.

On his first day as Chairman, Karl Krupp had declared: “It is amazing the number of born-and-bred Port Adelaide business people that have moved on to great success nationally and internationally who want to help.''

He was talking about volunteers. At no time did he append any warning to those volunteers that they would be received with suspicion and - as per the vernacular - given nothing, taken nowhere and treated like a dog.

I was lucky. I was given a bottle of vintage wine, taken via a business-class upgrade to Melbourne for two days’ work, and not treated like a dog. I was, however, treated with suspicion right from the start.

The Kaiser didn’t add a warning or a proviso or anything else because he didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know what he was talking about, and sure as shooting did not know what he was getting himself into. He’s about to find out.

The time has come to teach the chairman a thing or two. Time has come to tell the Kaiser what a catastrophe in reality, as against colossus in his own eyes, he has been and still is.

Time has come to confront Karl Krupp once and for all.

ROAD: “There is one seat still vacant on the board. If Krupp fills it with anyone other than a China expert ... anyone other than Daryl Ander or equal ... I will go into attack dog mode.”
ROBBINS: “You’re going to get yourself fired.”
ROAD: “I doubt anyone takes enough notice of me to do something like that.”
ROBBINS: “I wouldn’t count on it.”
ROAD: “I’ll take dismissal as a compliment.”



View attachment 681429




SCENE 64-

The last straw ... from a haystack of last straws.

LR phones Daryl Ander, discusses with him the strategy of bringing in Electricity Grid of SA as the vehicle for China State Net to transfer its pledged funding of the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment - simply by withholding a portion of State Net’s share of EGSA’s annual profit and using that, instead of repatriating all profit to Beijing and suffering the associated fees and forex devaluation.

This results in contact between Daryl Ander and Oliver Sutton, the EGSA CEO whom Ander knows via association as CEO of Ten-66 Funds Management. It’s from Oliver Sutton - whose nickname is Subito, derived from ‘Alluva Sudden’ - that Ander learns Xiao Junxi will be in Adelaide next week for a board meeting.

Road wants Ander to resume his connection with Xiao in Adelaide.

But in readiness for that, Road wants Ander to meet the new Premier of SA, to garner his support for PAFC’s State Net initiative and thereby the Alberton Oval Precinct Redevelopment as a whole.

Road wants Ander to be invited by PAFC to the public announcement that the SA Government will sponsor Jiangwan Stadium III - as it did Jiangwan Stadium I and II when Labor was in power. Road wants the Club to seize on this opportunity to introduce Daryl Ander to the new Premier of SA, so that he, Daryl Ander, has an open door not only to the Premier’s office, also to position Electricity Grid of SA, via his contacts with them, as funding facilitator in place of Zhangan Jinan Development and Mr. Zhang Ai, the Roadblock.

ALSTHOM: “We’ll get Daryl involved ... in due course.”

In due course?

In. Due. Course.

In due course?

BOOM.

Welcome back, Red Adair. Write up a few emails for me, will you, please, pal ... starting with: Never ever write ‘in due course’ in any communication.

It’s a weasel phrase implying: “asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk hyphen asterisk asterisk asterisk.”

Ugo Alsthom calls Robin Robbins to complain about Lockhart Road’s frequency of emails ... every email copied to everyone ... ordering everyone about.

ALSTHOM: “Can’t you get him to stop?”
ROBBINS: “No.”


Ugo hangs up in fury.

Things are imploding fast.

Voice of narrator:

There are two classes of Chinese dragons: the ordinary dragon which has four claws on each paw, and the imperial dragon with an extra claw, with five claws. An imperial dragon can do extra tricks. I reckon the one inside my head is an imperial dragon.

The Chinese dragon is from the same family as the phoenix, the griffen, the chimera - made up of different parts. The dragon has the head of a horse, the antlers of a reindeer, the mane of a lion, the forked tongue and body of a snake, the scales of a fish, the powerful legs of a tiger, and the needle-sharp talons of an eagle. No wonder it can do everything, except breathe fire. It can, on the contrary, incidentally, breathe water.

Now ... what about me? I’m made up of different parts, too. I’m part world-beater and part flop. I’m part problem-solver and part problem. I’m part ex-soldier, part ex-salesman, part ex-sportsman on turf and part ex-surfer on water. I’m part manager, part mentor, part poker player, part maverick. I’m part dad, part granddad, part husband and part Port Adelaide tragic.

I’m part volunteer and part free-of-charge professional.

Does that make me a Chinese dragon?

Or does it just mean I’ve lived a life.

Does it mean the Chinese dragon inside my skull, my resident mascot, has taken over this life of mine and is now making sure it’s still being lived?

Let’s see about that.


FINAL SCENE:

Alberton Oval Board Room, Friday, 7 December 2018.


View attachment 681441


Keene slides iPad across to Krupp with screen showing Road’s latest offending post on BigFooty (logo prominent). The thread title under which he has posted, a thread he created, reads: ‘Cause of Death of the 2018 Joint Major Sponsor’.

KEENE: “This time he has finally gone too far?”
KRUPP: “He went too far with me a long time ago.”
KEENE: “What’s to be done?”
KRUPP: “Tell him he’s fired.”
KEENE: “You hired him. In Hong Kong in mid May 2014, officially, with the whole board there and approving his role. You hired him, you fire him.”
KRUPP: “It’s my job to move things forward. I hire ... I don’t fire. It’s your job to clean up after me. You fire him.”
KEENE: “Er, I think that’s ... ”
KRUPP (inclines head towards the one vacant chair at the PAFC board table): “Darren Cahill has just confirmed to me that he’s making himself available to us for twelve months. I’ve asked him to sit right there.”
KRUPP (thinks): ‘All the li’l ole blue-collar club from Alberton true believers will love me for it.’


He turns to Keene, as if he’s just realised he’s there.

KRUPP: “The li’l ole blue-collar club from Alberton true believers will love us for it ... Thorold. Me ... and you, too. Thorold. Chick!? Where’s my briefcase?”

Keene opens his mouth ... no sound comes out. He knows not what to say. He knows not what to think. He only knows, suddenly, that he would do himself an immense favour by ‘retiring’ as CEO of the Port Adelaide Football Club ... and wangling a ‘retirement’ switch to Power Community Ltd., perhaps as CEO.

Thorold Keene’s passion for community, culture and casualness rises up in his throat, fills his chest, sends his heartbeat soaring with reborn purpose.

He smiles ... really smiles ... for the first time in as long as he can remember. He feels the smile take possession of his soul.

Thorold Keene, alias Common Touch Keene, has rediscovered that he is, first and foremost, a bloody good bloke.

Now it was time to get out of here.


View attachment 681442



SCENE 65 -

The camera fades towards black.

Just before it gets there, camera pivots to zoom in on a spot on the wall behind Krupp’s head. The spot appears to be a fly.

No, it’s not a fly.

It’s a tick ... a black bloodthirsty tick ... the sort of insect that takes pleasure at setting up camp under the Kaiser’s toilet seat.

A couple of hours ago, it may have been an imperial Chinese dragon.

View attachment 678355


Next:

Episode 8 - Epilogue

GREAT HALL OF THE PORT PEOPLE -

Some time in the future.
  • 200 tables, 2,000 diners, a thousand staff in the Great Hall of the People.
  • Red banners, black white silver teal banners, AFL shields ... everywhere.
  • New faces, new profiles everywhere ... a new world of Australian Football.
  • King K, feeling emasculated, is missing out on yet another picnic.
  • An imperial Chinese dragon, alias Darren Cahill.
  • Bang a gong - Bring back the Bars.


—————————————

Finally got down to read the latest episode ... Amazing read ... as always LR!

I dont know what emotions I feel. Sadness? No. Anger? Briefly, but no. Finally realized what it is .... Resignation! Realization that we are seeing an epic club-changing opportunity flushed down the toilet by inept and self-serving "servants" of the club!

Well done Port Adelaide!
 
Finally got down to read the latest episode ... Amazing read ... as always LR!

I dont know what emotions I feel. Sadness? No. Anger? Briefly, but no. Finally realized what it is .... Resignation! Realization that we are seeing an epic club-changing opportunity flushed down the toilet by inept and self-serving "servants" of the club!

Well done Port Adelaide!
Thanks for the compliment, mate. Am so glad you found value in the Docudrama ... even though it’s not a glowing recommendation in several places for the Club leadership and their mentality and personal motives.

I remain hopeful that, in this case, by stirring hard the pot of soup that has gone cold and grown an unappetising meniscus upon itself, the soup will recover and taste even better at the second attempt.
 
CHAIRMAN MOI

1559202308975.jpeg
 
My last few posts have featured cartoons intended to close this thread with a little overt humour and, I admit, designed to ‘stick’ it on the front page for the duration of ‘PAFC China Week in Shanghai’.

The Guardian has concluded the Week by coming up with its own ‘cartoon’ which qualifies for the ‘Media Shakes Head’ thread, but I choose to put it here:


Sportwatch: St Kilda beat Port, Cowboys beat Titans and Eagles beat Bulldogs – as it happened

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/l...v-thunderbirds-titans-v-cowboys-and-more-live

1559485684710.jpeg



Perhaps later this week I will post a brief summary of events in Shanghai these last few days, as I have seen them.

And then this thread will be left to go the way of all but the stickiest of threads ... and fade off the front page into history.
 
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As a closing comment along the lines of ‘I Bloody-well Give Up’, this picture of our China Ambassador Senior Coach is worth a thousand words:

1559650147042.jpeg
 
Dec 20, 2015
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As a closing comment along the lines of ‘I Bloody-well Give Up’, this picture of our China Ambassador Senior Coach is worth a thousand words:

View attachment 686947
I couldn't believe it when they broadcast this cringeworthy, disrespectful tripe. You'd think there would be a cultural advisor available to head off this sort of thing. But after reading your story, I guess that would be too much to expect from the club.
 
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As a closing comment along the lines of ‘I Bloody-well Give Up’, this picture of our China Ambassador Senior Coach is worth a thousand words:

View attachment 686947
Yeah, I couldn't believe it when I saw it either. Not only does Hinkley suck down a competitor to our major sponsor's beverage on TV during every cross to the coach's box, he goes one better and takes a sh1t on Chinese culture by playing the insular Aussie bogan. Hopefully Gui wasn't watching.
 
Why does that video even exist?

Is there a demand for low-rent footyshowesque hijinx from our supporter base?
Does our marketing team think this is what we want?

Who the * signed off on this rubbish?
 
Why does that video even exist?

Is there a demand for low-rent footyshowesque hijinx from our supporter base?
Does our marketing team think this is what we want?

Who the **** signed off on this rubbish?
Fox Footy love Hinkley. He might even have the equivalent of an ASA with them. Can't imagine this was set up by the club.


 
Which club CEO wrote on a piece of paper about 20 minutes in to his interview, he's not for us? Melbourne? Can see why now.

That says as much about Melbourne as it does about Hinkley.
 

Magpiespower

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"Hi, I'm the Ports Powaz media team - you may remember me from such lame sh!t as The Great We Are Liverpool Video Plagiary, F@%kJerrying Viral Social Media Posts with a Port Twist, Death by Emoji :pear::gun::pear::gun::pear::gun: :poo::poo::poo: and Announcing a Major Sponsor We Didn't Have. Today, we're here to embarrass you even more with our douche-canoe coach, Ken Cringely!"


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